About Chris
Baltimore City - Station North A&E District
When I was 25, I came to XandO Cafe in Charles Village when it existed and competed in my first poetry slam. Then I culled decades of notebooks for anything worth performing in front of a basement of beautiful, unwashed college folk, then I became co-host and slammaster and started representing the DC/Baltimore area at Poetry Slam, Inc. (PSi) events around North America.
Between 25 & 35, I published my first two poetry collections (Fridge Press's A Life Called Special,… more
Between 25 & 35, I published my first two poetry collections (Fridge Press's A Life Called Special,… more
5.- my city and me in couple's counseling
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3 from Baltimore Burning.pdfI think these are the first three poems I wrote as the Uprising began. Before the analysis of what being a White Baltimorian meant in that particular moment, all I could really do was channel the pain my city was in. I became obsessed with staying out up until curfew, refuting the upsettingly off-base assessments of old school friends on social media, and just trying to set a standard for White presence when everything feels like it's on fire. -
Me as middle sliver on the allyship venn diagram.pdfThen I started thinking about why it's significant that I was some queer White dude dating an incarcerated Black man from the Midwest while watching my home crumble under its own hate. My country asked me to celebrate gay marriage and ignore burning churches. My country asked me to gerrymander my heart so I could love and forget in equal enough measure. No wonder we fall out of time and place so easily. I really need to finish that manuscript...
seven- owning the experience of falling out of time and space
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Multiversal E1 (1) (1).pdfA group of Baltimorians are granted access to a boarding house full of glimpses at alternate versions of their lives. Existential crises abound.
won.- i begin as a poetic representative of a city
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Individual World Poetry Slam champion, 2011Photographic evidence that I can hold a trophy.
a YEAR in the mIDwEST
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Travel_and_Trial_FINAL.pdfThese are the Omaha poems. They document the near-fatal car crash, the early stages of processing rape, the mutually unfulfilling relationship, the firing from my job, the depleting of so many funds, the disappearance of so many trusted allies, for instance, me.
